First Mexican team in 2017

After 20 years of the UK competition, we are proud to have hosted the first Mexican team at the 2017 Formula Student competition.

ITESM is the “Monterrey Tech”, which has 31 campuses in 25 cities around Mexico with the team based on 3 campus of the Mexico City metropolitan region. It is the first time the university will compete in an event as prestigious and challenging as Formula Student as there is no competition in Mexico of the same magnitude. The team emerged as a 100% student initiative and even though the competition was thought of as “impossible” or too hard for many people at the university, they have now broken the paradigm in their school and faced the challenge that Formula Student is. They hope to perform well against the other teams as this is an incredible opportunity to show their skills. 

We spoke to Pedro Maass Diaz Lozano in the build up to the 2017 event to get his thoughts on the challenges of competing in their first ever Formula Student competition. 

“Our school is commonly recognized for promoting entrepreneurship and sustainability everywhere and our goal for this year is to show these values in our presentations and vehicle development. We hope to offer a different approach in an FS vehicle in some aspects like our business case and sustainability characteristics of our vehicle. For example, we will be using recycled materials like PET plastic for some components like the steering wheel. We look forward to the competition, the most important goal for us is to learn as much as we can in order to enter Class 1 next year. We hope to achieve great things and were very excited to participate in Formula Student for the first time.”

“I believe that the hardest challenge we have faced is funding. Dealing with and finding sponsors in Mexico is a tough matter, however since since there are not many FS/FSAE teams in the country (UNAM Motorsport are the only other team competing in another continent) we have a huge advantage.”

ITESM placed 11th out of the 26 Class 2 teams in 2017, a very respectable result for a team that have competed for the first time. We at Formula Student hope that the team will return to the UK with a working car for 2018 and build on their successes in the new season. To catch up with the team and their latest news , follow their Facebook page.